Truck Boy wasted no time. Taking advantage of the distraction of the record-setting announcement, he bolted off back down Main Street. Lester and his friends raced after him.

“That was brilliant!” Amanda said as they ran.

“Thanks,” Lester replied.

Mae, who was in the lead, called back over her shoulder. “Come on! He’s headed towards the college!”

Elmwood City College occupied roughly a dozen buildings clustered together on the other side of the barricade marking the edge of the festival. It wasn’t a large school, but the money the students and faculty spent in town was an essential part of the local economy. Because of this, the police department tended to look the other way during the festivities. As long as the loud Halloween parties stayed confined to the college grounds, they were happy to let them be campus security’s problem.

Judging by the mass of disheveled kids in torn clothes and green face paint, this year’s theme was zombies. The living dead dragged their feet and moaned admirably as they stumbled along to pulsating music provided by a decomposing DJ holding a severed arm. The costumes were elaborate, looking as though they’d required weeks of work, and the effect was only spoiled by the bright red plastic cups nearly everyone held.

Lester, Amanda, and Mae hurried under the stone-arch engraved with the school’s name. They were only a few seconds behind Truck Boy, who hit the students gathered in the courtyard at full speed.

As the panicked young man pushed through them, he bumped a tall student in a torn basketball uniform. That student stumbled, spilling his drink onto the head of a short zombie. Then, in a domino-like effect, the short zombie fell into a dancing circle of female undead, who began shouting and hitting each other.

Lester skidded to a stop. He’d never seen anything like it.

The minor scuffle rapidly spread through the rest of the party, growing in severity as it did, like a highly contagious virus. Students began shoving and tackling each other for no apparent reason. What moments ago had been a friendly celebration was now a pack of costumed zombies fighting as though they really did want to eat each other’s brains. Meanwhile, no one seemed to notice Truck Boy, who’d accidentally started it all, slip by them and disappear into the night.

“What just happened?” Mae asked, gawking at two fighting girls, who crashed into the DJ’s equipment, abruptly cutting off the music.

“I don’t know,” Amanda said, perplexed. “But maybe we should go.”

A pumpkin came sailing through the air and shattered on the ground in front of them.

“We should definitely go,” said Lester.

They turned and began quickly walking out the way they had come. At the sound of breaking glass Lester risked a look back as a cheer became an angry roar.

“Run!” he shouted, giving both Amanda and Mae an encouraging shove, and together they sped off as fast as their legs could carry them.

It was as though a horror movie had come to life. Zombies spilled out of every entrance to the college campus. They jumped over neatly trimmed hedges, climbed on parked cars, and swung from stop signs and lamp posts. The anger that had first turned them on one another was now focused outward as the students upended trash cans and smashed through the barriers marking the entrance to the festival.

Lester followed Mae and Amanda past the closed Ferris wheel and empty bounce houses. Thankfully the area was deserted. After the record-breaking announcement, most families, especially those with younger kids, had headed home.

When they reached the edge of the park at the end of Main Street, they found a small crowd of people still milling about. Lester and his friends were far enough ahead of the enraged students that several adults wondered aloud where they were going in such a hurry. However, their lead must have been shrinking because a moment later, Lester heard shouts and crashes as the two groups collided. He did not look back.

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Ducking around the side of the giant display of pumpkins, Lester realized he’d lost sight of his friends. His lungs were burning, and he made his way to the fountain, crouching down behind it to catch his breath.

Peering over the placid pool filled with floating apples, he saw adults in costumes fighting with a zombie horde of college kids, who swarmed over everything like a colony of ants. A couple of them had even climbed to the top of the scaffolding and were raining pumpkins down indiscriminately on anyone below.

Scanning the rows of shops at the edge of the park, Lester spotted Mae and Amanda underneath the green, white, and red awning of a closed Mexican restaurant. They were huddled in the doorway and waving frantically at him to join them.

Lester waited until he saw a space in the brawling crowd, then made a break for it. He dodged left to avoid a girl in a t-shirt that read, If zombies chase us, I’m tripping you, then sprinted along the back of the scaffolding. Avoiding several pumpkin bombs that exploded around him, he executed a slide through a patch of orange goo, narrowly escaping being knocked over by two fighting students. As they rolled past, Lester saw that they were actually biting each other.

He was nearly there and could hear Amanda and Mae shouting something that sounded like, “Hurry, Lester. Grab the ball!” But that couldn’t be right.

“What?” he yelled back at them.

“Hurry, Lester!” screamed Amanda, pointing to his left. “It’s going to fall!”

A screeching sound, like a hundred fingernails dragged across a chalkboard, came from the bolts holding the scaffolding, and it began to slowly tip backward. The sporadic rain of pumpkins thrown down by the students became a never-ending deluge that now included heavy boards and metal pipes.

Lester threw himself forward. Tucking into a ball, he tumbled and rolled out of the park as the collapsing display slammed into the ground behind him. For a moment, all was lost in a billowing cloud of debris.

Spitting pumpkin seeds, Lester moved to get up. But before he could right himself, hands began grabbing him from both sides. He fought back, fearing the zombie students had caught up to him, but his strength was gone, and his struggles amounted to little more than a fierce slapping.

“Ow! Lester, cut it out! It’s us!”

He looked up, relieved to see Amanda and Mae.

“Come on!” Amanda shouted and pulled him to his feet.

Dust was still settling on what was left of the pumpkin display as Mae and Amanda sat Lester down in the Mexican restaurant’s doorway. The sound of police sirens blared somewhere off in the distance. Amazingly, no one appeared to be seriously hurt despite all the destruction. Even the two students who’d been atop the scaffolding when it fell had walked away with little more than a scratch. Unfortunately, their brush with death had done little to dampen their appetite for mayhem. Armed with metal pipes, they were now making their way along the line of storefronts, smashing windows as they went.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” said Mae, watching them bludgeon their way towards the restaurant.

“Right,” Lester said. “Just give me a minute to rest.”

The alarm at the jewelry store two doors down began ringing loudly as the zombies, hooping and hollering, shattered yet another window.

“Maybe you can rest later,” said Amanda. But as she forced Lester to his feet, he cried out and grabbed his ankle.

“It’s no good,” he said, hopping on one foot. “I’ll never make it. You’ll have to go on without me.”

“Oh, shut up,” said Amanda. “We’re not leaving you here.”

She and Mae each took one of Lester’s arms, and the three of them began shuffling away. They moved as steadily as they could, the continuing sound of smashing propelling them along.

Finally, they reached the opening of a narrow side street. They were debating whether to go down it when a set of oncoming headlights blinded them. Shielding their eyes, they barely had time to flinch as the white postal delivery truck screeched to a stop in front of them.

“Hurry, get in!”

Lester smiled at the sight of Ben Titus sitting behind the wheel in his uniform.

Amanda and Mae threw open the side door, tossed Lester onto a stack of mailbags, then jumped in behind him. Exhausted, the three of them fell against each other, breathing heavily as the truck sped away.

Ben concentrated on driving, weaving them through a maze of alleys, parking lots, and one-way streets. They passed police cars going in the opposite direction several times, their sirens on and blue lights flashing. It was only once they’d crossed the city limits and were on the road back to Giles Hollow that Ben slowed down.

“So,” he said as if nothing unusual had happened. “Good festival this year?

“Not bad,” Lester replied, just as casually. “We beat the jack-o-lantern record.”

“Well, now, that is good news!”

Mae laughed, and Amanda punched Lester hard in the arm.